Patchment Pricing: $2.50 Per Call, and What Counts as a Call

Patchment is an AI answering service built for HVAC, plumbing, and home-service businesses. It answers calls and texts, qualifies jobs, books them into your schedule, and handles day-of coordination with your techs and customers.

Quick answer: Patchment costs $2.50 per call and $0.02 per text. At the start of each month you buy a set amount of credits sized to your expected volume. If you go over, anything above that amount is billed at a 25% surcharge. That's the whole model. Patchment is sold on 6- or 12-month agreements.

How billing works

1. Pick your monthly amount. At the start of every month, you buy a set amount of credits based on how many calls and texts you expect.
2. Patchment draws from it. Each call uses $2.50 of credits and each text uses $0.02.
3. Overage is simple. If you use more than you bought, everything above that amount is billed at 25% over the standard rate: $3.125 per call and $0.025 per text. No other fees kick in.

What counts as a call?

Two kinds of calls are billed at $2.50 each:

• A customer calling in. New jobs, emergencies, rescheduling, questions about an existing appointment. If a customer calls your line and Patchment picks up, that's one call.
• A technician calling in to report on a job. When a tech calls to say they're running late, the job's done, or they need a part, Patchment logs it and updates the customer and the office. That's one call.

How are texts billed?

Texts are $0.02 each. That covers the texts Patchment sends and handles: booking confirmations, appointment reminders, customer arrival updates, and text conversations with customers who'd rather not call. Even a shop sending a couple thousand texts a month spends tens of dollars on texting, not hundreds.

How much should I buy each month?

Multiply your expected monthly calls by $2.50, then add two cents per text.

Most owners already know roughly how many calls they get. If you don't, your phone carrier or your field service software's call log will tell you. In the demo, we'll look at your call volume together and pick a starting amount.

What happens in busy season?

If a heat wave or a hard freeze pushes you past your monthly amount, Patchment keeps answering. It never stops picking up because you ran out. The calls above your amount are billed at $3.125 instead of $2.50.

For example, a shop that bought for 400 calls and takes 450 that month pays its normal amount plus 50 calls at $3.125, or $156.25 extra. Those 50 calls are the jobs that would otherwise have gone to voicemail at the busiest time of year.

What's included in every call?

Every call Patchment handles gets the full product, not a stripped-down version:

• 24/7 answering, including nights, weekends, and holidays
• Emergency detection and triage, with urgent calls flagged and routed by your rules
• Booking into Jobber or Housecall Pro, using real openings from your schedule
• Day-of coordination, including tech updates and customer arrival notices
• Per-action controls, so you decide what Patchment handles on its own and what waits for your approval
• A full audit trail of every action taken on your behalf

Patchment never quotes job prices to callers and never invents availability. Anything unclear goes to a human.

What agreement lengths are available?

Patchment is offered on 6-month and 12-month agreements.

Why per call instead of a flat monthly fee?

Per-call pricing ties what you pay to what you use. A small shop taking 100 calls a month isn't subsidizing a big operation taking 1,000. And because the price is per call rather than per minute, a long emergency call costs the same as a quick one.

How does that compare to handling calls in-house?

A dispatcher or office manager can only take one call at a time, isn't on the phone at 11 PM without overtime, and can't answer while they're already coordinating a tech. Patchment handles calls in parallel, around the clock.

Each week Patchment sends a plain-English digest of the calls it handled and the jobs it booked, so you can see exactly what you paid for.

Can I try it before I sign up?

Patchment doesn't have a self-serve free trial. Instead, the 20-minute demo includes a live number you can call yourself. Throw a burst-pipe call or a no-heat emergency at it and hear exactly how it handles your kind of calls before you sign anything.

How long does setup take, and do I keep my number?

Setup takes one business day, and you keep your existing phone number. A person walks you through onboarding.

Every action starts on "ask me first," so Patchment brings each booking decision to you before acting. As you get comfortable, you loosen those controls one action type at a time.

Key takeaways

1. Patchment costs $2.50 per call, whether the call is two minutes or twenty, plus $0.02 per text.
2. You buy a set amount of credits at the start of each month. Usage above that is billed at a 25% surcharge, and Patchment never stops answering.
3. A call is a customer calling in or a technician calling in to report on a job.
4. After-hours and emergency calls cost the same as any other call.
5. Patchment is offered on 6- and 12-month agreements, sets up in one business day, and starts with every action on "ask me first."

Next step

Book the 20-minute demo at patchment.app, call the live number yourself, and bring a rough idea of your monthly call volume so we can pick the right monthly amount together.